New York Times:

These bets offer a glimpse into the rarefied world of professional gamblers, where often money is not the object, but the pawn one moves about the board. Such wagers are “mostly a way of keeping score, but if the points are too small there is no fun in it,” said Daniel Negreanu, the winner of four World Series of Poker tournaments, who has been known to play casual rounds of Wii bowling and Golden Tee golf for sums totaling in the low five figures. “You have to understand that losing money is no big deal when you gamble for a living.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/fashion/29bets.html

I wonder what the most anyone has bet against someone else on the outcome of a videogame? The most I've bet was $5 on high score in SMB. That was 20 years ago.

Only if it was Monopoly money.=)

You know what is sad? That I saw the title and KNEW it had to do with Daniel. I've read his blog for a while now and while I don't agree with the man politically, he is a phenomenal poker player.

Hell I can tell you for a fact that Negreanu made more from side bets with other players about how he would do in the WSoP tournaments than he did from actually playing in the tournaments (and he has already had a 22nd, 13th, 11th, 7th, and 1st place finish at this year's series alone worth over $500k).

I'm actually following the live updates from the $50k H.O.R.S.E. event right now, they are down to 3 people (Erick Lindgren, Scotty Nguyen, and Michael DeMichele). Arguably the best event at the WSoP this year.

edit: Doh, Lindgren just got knocked out, he has to settle for $781k...poor guy...=P

wow 10,000 on wii bowling cool i made 4 300 games in wii bowling so i wonder if i could beat him and I used to have bets on Pokemon battles but it wasn't for money it was for rare Pokemon so i could battle more and make more bets

@Xstonexcold316x,

I couldn't tell you how good Negreanu is for certain but from the games he has recounted in his blog I'm guessing he bowls around 230 average or so, but they also play with handicaps to even it up.

ohhhh....dang i wanted to play him and win $10,000 but i guess im to good for my own good

I'd bet $10,000 that RolStoppable is the best Mario Kart player in this forum.

Nah you can just hustle him

Thats actually kind of amusing to think of someone going around Vegas hustling folks out of hundreds of thousands of dollars at Wii Sports Bowling =P Sounds like the beginnings of an SNL skit =P

Yeah. I know David Williams and Jon Finkel. Both of them like to make bets on all kinds of things. For a lot of highly competitive people it seems natural to bet on anything that's a competition. Then there's degenerate gamblers, but that's a different story.